Preface

My purpose in this study is to clarify the function of climate as

a factor within the structure of human existence. So my problem
is not that of the ordering of man's life by his natural environment.
Natural environment is usually understood as an objective extension
of "human climate" regarded as a concrete basis. But when we come
to consider the relationship between this and human life, the latter
is already objectified, with the result that we find ourselves examin-
ing the relation between object and object, and there is no link with
subjective human existence. It is the latter that is my concern here,
for it is essential to my position that the phenomena of climate are
treated as expressions of subjective human existence and not of natural
environment. I should lik.e at the outset to register my protest against
this confusion.
It was in the early summer of 1927 when I was reading Heideg-
ger's Zein und Seit in Berlin that I first came to reflect on the problem
of climate. I found myself intrigued by the attempt to treat the
structure of man's existence in terms of time but I found it hard to
see why, when time had thus been made to play a part in the struc-
ture of subjective existence, at the same juncture space also was not
postulated as part of the basic structure of existence. Indeed it would
be a mistake to allege that space is never taken into account in
Heidegger's thinking, for Lebendige NatuT was given fresh life by
the German Romantics, yet even so it tended to be almost obscured
in the face of the strong glare to which time was exposed. I perceived
that herein lay the limitations of Heidegger's work. for time not linked
with space is not time in the true sense and Heidegger stopped short
at this point because his Dasein was the Dasein of the individual
v
only. He treated human existence as being the existence of a man.
From the standpoint of the dual structure-both individual and social-
of human existence, he did not advance beyond an abstraction of a
single aspect. But it is only when human existence is treated in
terms of its concrete duality that time and space are linked and that
history also (which never appears fully in Heidegger) is first revealed
in its true guise. And at the same time the connection between history
and climate becomes evident.
It may well be that this problem presented itself to me because
it was precisely when my mind was full of a variety of impressions
about climate that I was confronted with a detailed examination of
the question of time. But again, it was precisely in that this problem
did present itself that I was made to ruminate over and to concentrate
my attention on my impressions about climate. In this sense it would
be fair to argue that for my part it was the problems of time and
history that brought a realization of the question of climate. Had
not these problems acted as intermediaries, my impressions of climate
would have stayed simply as such, mere impressions of climate. And,
in fact, the intermediary function that these considerations fulfilled
indicates the connection between climate and history.
In the main, this work. is based on notes for lectures given over
the period September 1928 to March 1929. This series was given
very soon after my return from my travels outside Japan with the
result that, in that I had no leisure to reflect in detail on the problems
of time and space in human existence, I took up for discussion only
the consideration of climate. The greater part of the contents of
this book have been published piecemeal, with my original lecture
notes written up and revised as the occasion arose, and only the last
chapter retains its basic format. From the outset, the several problems
were considered as intimately inter-related and though I am fully
conscious that there still remain considerable deficiencies, I have
vi
....
10
W
decided for the present to put my thoughts together and publish.
I should be gratefull for my colleagues' criticisms and suggestions.
August 1935
I have taken the opportunity of this re-edition to revise the
section on China in Chapter Three which was written in 1928, when
leftist thinking was very prevalent. I have eliminated traces of leftist
theory and now present this chapter as a pure study of climate.
November 1943
vii
Chapter 1 The Basic Principles of Climate
( 1 ) The Phenomena of Climate
I use our word Fu-do, which means literally. "Wind and Earth",
as a general term for the natural environment of a given land, its
climate, its weather, the geological and productive nature of the soil,
its topographic and scenic features. The ancient term for this concept
was Sui-do, which might be literally translated as "Water and Earth",
Behind these terms lies the ancient view of Nature as man's environ-
ment compounded of earth, water, fire. and wind. It is not without
reason that I wish to treat this natural environment of man not as
"nature" but as "climate" in the above sense, But in order to clarify
my reason. I must, in the first place, deal with the phenomenon of
climate.
All of us live on a given land and the natural environment of
this land "environs" us whether we like it or not, People usually
discern this natural environment in the form of natural phenomena
of various kinds, and accordingly concern themselves with the in8uences
which such a natural environment exercises upon "us"-in some cases
upon "us" as biological and physiological objects and in other cases
upon "us" as being engaged in practical activities such as the forma-
tion of a polity, Each of these influences is complicated enough to
demand specialized study, However, what I am here concerned with
is whether the climate we experience in daily life is to be regarded
as a natural phenomenon. It is proper that natural science should
treat climate as a natural phenomenon. but it is another question
whether the phenomena of climate are in essence objects of natural
science.
By way of clarifying this question. let me quote as an example the
phenomenon of cold, which is merely one dement within climate.
2 CHAPTER I THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLl:\IATE CHAPTER I THE BASIC PRINCIPl.ES OF CLIMATE 3
and is something distinct and evident as far as our common sense
is concerned. It is an undeniable fact that we feel cold. But what
is this cold that we feel? Is it that air of a certain temperature, cold,
that is, as a physical object, stimulates the sensory organs in our body
so that we as psychological subjects experience it as a certain set mental
state? If so, it follows that the "cold" and "we" exist as separate
and independent entities in such a manner that only when the cold
presses upon us from outside is there created an "intentional" or
directional relationship by which "we feel the cold". If this is the
case, it is natural that this should be conceived in terms of the in-
fluence of the cold upon us.
But is this really so? How can we know the independent existence
of the cold before we feel cold? It is impossible. It is by feeling
cold, that we discover the cold. It is simply by mistaking the inten-
tional relationship that we consider that the cold is pressing in on
us from outside. It is not true that the intentional relationship is
set up only when an object presses from outside. As far as individual
consciousness is concerned, the subject possesses the intentional structure
within itself and itself "directs itself towards something". The "feel-
ing" of "feeling the cold" is not a "point" which establishes a relation-
ship directed at the cold, but it is in itself a relationship in virtue
of its "feeling" and it is in this relationship that we discover cold.
The intentionality of such a relational structure is thus a structure
of the subject in relation with the cold. The fact that "We feel the
cold" is, first and foremost, an "intentional experience" of this kind.
But, it may be argued, if this is the case, is not the cold merely
a moment of subjective experience? The cold thus discovered is cold
limited to the sphere of the "I". But what we call the cold is a
transcendental object outside the "1", and not a mere feeling of the
"I". Now how can a subjective experience establish a relation with
such a transcendental object? in other words, how can the feeling
of cold relate itself to the coldness of the outside air? This question
involves a misunderstanding with regard to the object of the intention
in the intentional relationship. The object of intention is not a mental
entity. It is not cold as an experience independent of objective cold
that is the intentional object. When we feel the cold, it is not the
"feeling" of cold that we feel, but the "coldness of the air" or the
"cold". In other words, the cold felt in intentional experience is
not subjective but objective. It may be said, therefore, that an in-
tentional relation in which we feel the cold is itself related to the
coldness of the air. The cold as a transcendental existence only exists
in this intentionality. Therefore, there can be no problem of the
relationship of the feeling of cold to the coldness of the air.
According to this view, the usual distinction between subject and
object, or more particularly the distinction between "the cold" and
the "I" independently of each other, involves a certain misunderstand-
ing. When we feel cold, we ourselves are already in the coldness
of the outside air. That we come into relation with the cold means
that we are outside in the cold. In this sense, our state is characterized
by "ex-sistere" as Heidegger emphasizes, or, in our term, by "inten-
tionality".
This leads me to the contention that we ourselves face ourselves in
the state of "exsistere". Even in cases where we do not face ourselves
by means of reflection or looking into ourselves, our selves are exposed
to ourselves. Reflection is merely a form of grasping ourselves. Fur-
thermore, it is not a primary mode of self-revelation. (But if the
word "reflect" is taken in its visual sense, i. e., if it is understood as
to dash against something and rebound from it and to reveal oneself in
this rebound or reflection, it can be argued that the word may well
indicate the way in which our selves are exposed to ourselves.) We
feel the cold, or we are out in the cold. Therefore, in feeling the
cold, we discover ourselves in the cold itself. This does not mean
4 CHAPTER 1 THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE CHAPTER 1 THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE 5
that we transfer our selves into the cold and there discover the selves
thus transferred. The instant that the cold is discovered, we are
already outside in the cold. Therefore, the basic essence of what is
"present outside" is not a thing or object such as the cold, but we
ourselves. "Ex-sistere" is the fundamental principle of the structure
of our selves, and it is on this principle that intentionality depends.
That we feel the cold is an intentional experience, in which we discover
our selves in the state of "ex-sistere", or our selves already outside in
the cold.
We have considered the problem in terms of individual conscious-
ness in the experience of cold. But, as we have been able to use the
expression "we feel cold", without any contradiction, it is "we", not
"I" alone that experience the cold. We feel the same cold in common.
It is precisely because of this that we can use terms describing the
cold in our exchange of daily greetings. The fact that the feeling
of cold differs between us is possible only on the basis of our feeling
the cold in common. Without this basis it would be quite impossible
to recognise that any other "I" experiences the cold. Thus, it is not
"I" alone but "we", or more strictly, "I" as "we" and "we" as
"I" that are outside in the cold. The structure of which "ex-sistere"
is the fundamental principle is this "we", not the mere "I". Accord-
ingly, "ex-sistere" is "to be out among other 'I's'" rather than "to
be out in a thing such as the cold". This is not an intentional relation
but a "mutual relationship" of existence. Thus it is primarily "we"
in this "mutual relationship" that discover our selves in the cold.
I have attempted to define the phenomenon cold. However, we
do not experience this kind of atmospheric phenomenon in isolation
from othen of its kind. It is experienced in relation to warmth, or
heat, or in connection with wind, rain, snow, sunshine, and so forth.
In other words the cold is simply one of the whole series of similar
phenomena which we call weather. When we enter a warm room
after walking in the cold wind, when we stroll in the mild spring
breeze after a cold winter is over, or when we are caught in a
torrential shower on a boiling hotsummer day, we first of all apprehend
ourselves w ~ t n such meteorological phenomena, which are other
than our selves. Again, in changes in the weather, we first of all ap-
prehend changes in ourselves. This weather, too, is not experienced
in isolation. It is experienced only in relation to the soil, the topo-
graphic and scenic features and so on of a given land. A cold wind
may be experienced as a mountain blast or the cold, dry wind that
sweeps through Tokyo at the end of the winter. The spring breeze
may be one which blows off cherry blossoms or which caresses the
waves. So, too, the heat of summer may be of the kind to wither
rich verdure or to entice children to play merrily in the sea. As we
find our gladdened or pained selves in a wind that scatters the cherry
blossoms, so do we apprehend our wilting selves in the very heat of
summer that scorches down on plants and trees in a spell of dry weather.
In other words, we find ourselves-ourselves as an element in the
"mutual relationship"-in "climate".
Such self-apprehension is not the recognition of the "I" as the
subject that feels the cold and the heat or as the subject that is glad-
dened by the cherry blossoms. In these experiences we do not look
towards the "subject". We stiffen, or we put on warm clothes, or
we draw near the brazier when we feel cold. Or, we may feel more
concern about putting clothes on our children or seeing that the old
are near the brazier. We work hard to have the money to buy more
clothes and charcoal. Charcoal burners make charcoal in the moun-
tains, and textile factories produce clothing materials. Thus, in our
relationship with the cold, we come to engage ourselves, individually
and socially, il). various measures for protecting ourselves from the
cold. In the same way, when we rejoice in the cherry blossoms, we
do not look to the subject; rather it is the blossoms that take our
6 CHAPTEJl I THE BASIC PJlINCIPLES OF CLIMATE CHAPTEJl I THE BASIC PJlINCIPI.ES OF CLIMATE 7
attention and we invite our friends to go blossom-viewing, or drink
and dance with them under the trees. Thus in our relationship with
the spring scene, either individually or socially we adopt various
measures for securing enjoyment from it. The same may be said of
the summer heat or disasters such as storms and floods. It is in our
relationship with the tyranny of nature that we first come to engage
ourselves in joint measures to secure early protection from such
tyranny. The apprehension of the self in climate is revealed as the
discovery of such measures; it is not the recognition of the subject.
The various measures which are thus discovered, such as clothes,
braziers, charcoal-burning, houses, blossom-viewing, dykes, drains,
anti-typhoon structures, and the like, are of course what we ourselves
have devised at our own discretion. It is not, however, with no con-
nection with such' climatic phenomena as the cold, the heat, and
the humidity that we have devised them. We have discovered ourselves
in climate, and in this self-apprehension we are directed to our free
creation. Further, it is not only we ourselves who today cooperate
to defend ourselves or work against the cold, the heat, the storm or
the flood. We possess an inheritance of self-apprehension accumulated
over the years since the time of our ancestors. A house style is an
established mode of construction, and this cannot have come into be-
ing without some connection with climate. The house is a device for
protecting ourselves both from cold and from heat. The style of
architecture must be determined most of all by the degree of protection
required against cold or heat. Then a house must be so built as to
withstand storm, flood, earthquake, fire and the like. A heavy roof
is necessary against storm and flood, though it may be disadvantageous
in the event of an earthquake. The house should be adapted to these
various conditions. Furthermore, humidity imposes severe limitations
on residential style. Where the humidity is very high, thorough
ventilation is essential. Wood, paper and clay are the building ma-
terials that offer the best protection against humidity, but they give
no protection at all against fire. These various restraints and con-
ditions are taken into account and accorded their degree of importance
before the pattern of the house of a given locality is finally established.
Thus the determination of the architectural style of a house is an ex-
pression of the self-apprehension of man within climate. The same
may be said about clothing styles. Here again, clothing styles have
been established socially over a long period, styles being determined
by climate. A style distinctive to a certain locality, perhaps because
of the latter's cultural supremacy, may be transplanted to another
locality with a different climate. (This can occur more readily with
dress than with architectural styles). But to whatever locality it may
be transplanted, the fact that the style is conditioned by the climate
which produced it can never be effaced_ European-style clothes remain
European, even after more than half a century of wear in Japan.
Such climatic conditioning is even more obvious in the case of food,
for it is with climate that the production of food is most intimately
connected. It is not that man made the choice between stock-raising
and fishing according to his preference for meat or fish. On the
contrary, he came to prefer either meat or fish because climate deter-
mined whether he should engage in stock-raising or in fishing. In the
same way, the predominant factor governing the choice between a
vegetable or a meat diet is climate, rather than the vegetarian's ideology.
So our appetite is not for food in general but for food prepared in
a certain way which has long been established. What we actually
want when we are hungry is bread or rice, a beef steak or raw fish.
The way that food is prepared is an expression of a people's climatic
self-apprehension and is something which has taken shape over many
generations. Our ancestors ate shell-fish and seaweed long before
they mastered the skills of the farmer.
We can also discover climatic phenomena in all the expressions
of human activity, such as literature, art, religion, and manners and
8 CHAPTER J THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE CHAPTER J THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE 9
1.0
00
customs. This is a natural consequence as long as man apprehends
himself in climate. It is evident, therefore, that climatic phenomena
understood in this light differ from phenomena studied by natural
science. To consider a sea-food diet as a climatic phenomenon is not
to regard climate merely as natural environment. To interpret artistic
style in relation to climate is to indicate the inseparability of climate
from history. The most frequent misunderstanding about climate
occurs in the commonplace view that influences exist between man and
his natural environment.
Here, however, the factors of human existence and history have
been excluded from the concrete phenomena of climate, which are
regarded merely as natural environment. It is from such a standpoint
that it is often said that not only is man conditioned by climate, but
that he, in his turn, works on and transforms climate. But this is to
ignore the true nature of climate. We, on the other hand, have seen
that it is in climate that man apprehends himself. The activity of
man's self-apprehension, man, that is, in his dual character of individual
and social being, is at the same time of a historical nature. Therefore,
climate does not exist apart from history, nor history apart from climate.
This can only be understood from the fundamental structure of human
existence.
(2) Climatic Limitation of Human Existence
I have defined climate as a means for man to discover himself.
But what is this "man"? If one is to interpret climate as one of the
forms of limitation on human existence, one should attempt to state,
in broad terms, the place this limitation has in the general structure
of human existence.
By "man" I mean not the individual (anthropos, homo, homme,
etc.) but man both in this individual sense and at the same time
man in society, the combination or the association of man. This
duality is the essential nature of man. So neither anthropology,
which treats man the individual, nor sociology, which takes up the
other aspect, can grasp the real or full substance of man. For a true
and full understanding, one must treat man both as individual and
as whole; it is only when the analysis of human existence is made from
this viewpoint that it becomes evident that this existence is completely
and absolutely negative activity. And human existence is precisely
the realisation of this negative activity.
Human existence, through fragmentation into countless individual
entities, is the activity which brings into being all forms of combina-
tion and community. Such fragmentation and union are essentially
of a self-active and practical nature and cannot come about in the
absence of self-active entities. Hence, space and time in this self-active
sense, form the fundamental structure of these activities. It is at this
point that space and time are grasped in their essential form and their
inseparability becomes distinct. An attempt to treat the structure of
human existence as one of time only would fall into the error of trying
to discover human existence on the level only of individual con-
sciousness. But if the dual character of human existence is taken as the
essential nature of man, then it is immediately clear that space must
be regarded as linked with time.
With the elucidation of the space-and time-nature of human ex-
istence, the structure of human association also appears in its true
light. The several unions and combinations that man fashions evolve
intrinsically according to a certain order. They are to be regarded
as not static social structures but as active and evolving systems. They
are the realisation of negative activity. This is how history took shape.
Here the space-and time-structure of human existence is revealed
as climate and history: the inseparability of time and space is the
basis of the inseparability of history and climate. No social forma-
tion could exist if it lacked all foundation in the space-structure of
man, nor does time become history unless it is founded in such social
10 CHAPTER I THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE CHAPTER 1 THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE II
being, for history is the structure of existence in society. Here also
we see clearly the duality of human existence-the finite and the
infinite. Men die; their world changes; but through this unending
death and change, man lives and his world continues. It continues
incessantly through ending incessantly. In the individual's eyes, it is
a case of an "existence for death", but from the standpoint of society
it is an "existence for life". Thus human existence is both individual
and social. But it is not only history that is the structure of social
existence, for climate is also a part of this structure and, at that, a
part quite inseparable from history. For it is from the union of
climate with history that the latter gets its flesh and bones. In terms
of the contrast between spirit and matter, history can never be merely
spiritual self.develoI;>ment. For it is only when, as selfactive being,
the spirit objectivises itself, in other words, only when it includes such
self-active physical principle that it becomes history, as self-develop-
ment. This "self-active physical principle", as we might term it, is
climate. The human duality, of the finite and the infinite, is most
plainly revealed as the historical and climatic structure.
It is here that climate is revealed; for mankind is saddled not
simply with a general past but with a specific climatic past; a general
formal historical structure is substantiated by a specific content. It
is only in this way that the historical being of mankind can become
the being of man in a given country at a given age. Again, climate
as this specific content does not exist alone and in isolation from
history, entering and becoming a part of the content of history at a
later juncture. From the very first, climate is historical climate. In
the dual structure of man-the historical and the climatic-history is
climatic history and climate is historical climate. History and climate
in isolation from each other are mere abstractions; climate as I shall
consider it is the essential climate that has not undetgone this abstrac-
tion.
Such, then, is the place of climatic limitation in the structure of
human life. It will no doubt be evident that there are certain points
of similarity between the problem of climate and that of "body" in
traditional anthropology, which took as its study the individual nature
abstracted from the duality of the individual and the social. It then
endeavoured to treat man, divorced from his relationships, as a duality
()f body and spirit, but all efforts to clearly grasp this distinction be
tween body and spirit led to a final disregard for the unity in this
distinction. This was essentially because the body was taken as equiva.
lent to a "material body" and divorced from concrete self-active
principle. It was for this reason that anthropology was divided into
spiritualist and materialist camps, the one developing from psychology
towards epistemology, the other moving in the direction either of
anthropology as a branch of zoology, or of physiology and anatomy.
But the philosophical anthropology of today is attempting to heal
this division and again treat man as a duality of spirit and body.
So the crux of the problem becomes the realisation that the body is
not mere matter; in other words, it is the problem of the selfactive
nature of the body. Yet anthropology will always be the study of
"individual man" rather than of "man in his social relationship".
We, in this enquiry, are pursuing a problem of a similar nature,
although ours, that of the duality of human nature, is the more funda-
mental. The selfactive nature of the body has as its foundation the
spatial and temporal structure of human life; a self-active body cannot
remain in isolation for its structure is dynamic, uniting in isolation
and isolated within union. When various social combinations are
evolved within this dynamic structure it becomes something historical
or climatic. Climate, too, as part of man's body, was regarded like
the body as mere matter, and so came to be viewed objectively as
mere natural environment. So the self-active nature of climate must
be retrieved in the same sense that the selfactive nature of the body
12 CHAPTER 1 THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE
CHAPTER 1 THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE HI
IV
o
o
has to be retrieved. It would be fair to say, then, that. in its most funda-
mental significance. the relation between body and spirit lies in the
relation between the body and the spirit of "man in his social relation
ships", the individual and social body-spirit relation which includes
the relationship with history and climate.
The problem of climate affords a pointer for any attempt to analyse
the structure of human life. The ontological comprehension of human
life is not to be attained by a mere transcendence which regards the
structure as one of time, for this has to be transcendence in the sense
of the discovery of the self in the other and the subsequent reversal
to absolute negation in the union of self and other. In this case, the
relationships between man and man must be on a transcendent plane
and the relationships themselves, the basis for the discovery of self and
other, must already be essentially on a plane which "stands outside"
(ex-sistere). Transcendence itself must have assumed some historical
significance, as being the temporal structure of such relationships. It
is not something in the individual consciousness but the relationships
themselves that constantly reach into the future. Time in individual
consciousness is a mere abstraction on the basis of the history of the
relationships. Transcendence also "stands outside" (ex-sistere) clio
matically. In other words, man discovers himself in climate. From
the standpoint of the individual. this becomes consciousness of the
body, but in the context of the more concrete ground of human life,
it reveals itself in the ways of r r e t i n ~ communities. and thus in the
ways of constructing speech. the methods of production. the styles of
buildinl'!;. and so on. Transcendence, as the structure of human life.
must include all these entities.
Thus climate is seen to be the factor by which self-active human
e i n ~ <:an be made objective: climatic phenomena show man how
to discover himself as "standing outside" (i.e., ex-sistere). The self
discovered by the cold turns into tools devised against the cold, such
as houses or clothes, which then confront the self. Again climate
itself. the climate in which we move. and in which we "stand outside",
becomes a tool to be used. The cold, for instance. is not only some-
thing that sends us off for warm clothes; it can also be utilised to freeze
the bean-curd. Heat is not only something that makes us use a fan;
it is also the heat that nourishes the rice-plants. Wind has us scurry-
ing to the temple to pray for safety through the typhoon season; it
is also the wind that fills a sail. So even in such relationships we
"stand outside" in climate and understand our selves from it, our
selves. that is. as consumers or users. In other words, this self-com-
prehension through climate at the same time leads us to discover
ourselves as confronted with such tools.
There is much to be learnt from the thought that such tools are
to be found very near to hand in human life. A tool is essentially
"for doing something". A hammer is for beating. a shoe for wearing.
But the object that is "for doing something else" has an immanent
connection with the purpose for which it is employed. The hammer,
for example, is a tool for making shoes, and shoes. again, are tools for
walking. The essential character of the tool lies in its being "for a
purpose", lies. that is, in this purpose-relation. Now this purpose
relation derives from human life and at its basis we find the climatic
limitation of human life. Shoes may be tools for walking. but the
great majority of mankind could walk without them; it is rather cold
and heat that make shoes necessary. Clothes are to be worn, yet they
are worn above all as a protection against cold. Thus this purpose
relation finds its final origin in climatic self-comprehension. As well
as understanding ourselves in cold or heat, we take measures, as free
agents, for protection. \Ve should not devise clothes completely
spontaneously in the absence of the factors of cold or heat. It is when
we proceed from "for our protection" to "with what" that climatic
14 CHAPTER 1 THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE CHAPTER 1 THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIlIfATE 15
self-comprehension becomes express. Hence clothes are devised to
keep us warm or cool; they are of every style and thickness. Such
stuffs as wool, cotton and silk come to be socially recognized as mate-
rials for clothes. It is clear, then, that such tools have a very close
relationship with climatic limitation. To say, then, that tools are to
be found nearest to hand is, in fact, to say that climatic limitation is
the foremost factor in objective existence.
Climate, then, is the agent by which human life is objectivised,
and it is here that man comprehends himself; there is self-discovery in
climate. We discover ourselves in all manner of significances every
day; it may be in a pleasant or a sad mood, but such feelings or
tempers are to be regarded not merely as mental states but as our
way of life. These, moreover, are not feelings that we are free to
choose of ourselves, but are imposed on us as pre-determined states.
Nor is it climate only that prescribes such pre-determined feelings,
for our individual and social existence controls the way of life of the
individual, which is dependent on it in the form of pre-existent rela-
tionships, and imparts to him determined moods; it may sometimes
impart to society a determined mood in the form of an existent histori-
cal situation. But the imposition of climate, united and involved
with these, is the most conspicuous. One morning we may find our-
selves "in a revived mood". This is interpreted in terms of specific
temperature and humidity conditions influencing us externally and
inducing internally a revived mental condition. But the facts are quite
different, for what we have here is not a mental state but the freshness
of the external atmosphere. But the object that is understood in
terms of the temperature and the humidity of the atmosphere has not
the slightest similarity with the freshness itself. This freshness is a
state; it appertains to the atmosphere but it is neither the atmosphere
itself nor a property of the atmosphere. It is not that we have certain
states imposed on us by the atmosphere; the fact that the atmosphere
possesses a state of freshness is that we ourselves feel revived. We
discover ourselves, that is, in the atmosphere. Bu,t the freshness of
the atmosphere is not that of a mental state, as is shown best by the
fact that the morning feeling of freshness is embodied and expressed
directly in our mutual greetings. We comprehend ourselves in this
freshness of the atmosphere, for what is fresh is not our own mental
state but the atmosphere itself. So we do not need to go through the
process of examining others' mental states to be able to greet each
other with "Isn't it a lovely morning?".
Such climatic burdens or impositions occur very frequently in
our life. The feeling of exhilaration on a clear, fine day, of gloom
on a day in the rainy season, of vitality when the young green bursts,
of gentleness when the spring rain falls, of freshness on a summer
morning, of savageness on a day of violent wind and rain-we could
run through all the words that haiku uses to denote the season and
still not exhaust such climatic burdens. Our life is thus restricted by
a climate possessed of a limitless range of states. So not only the
past but also climate are imposed on us.
Our being has a free in addition to this imposed character. What
has already occurred happens in advance; what suffers imposition is
at the same time free; in this we see the historical nature of our
being. But this historical nature is bound up with climatic nature,
so that if the imposition contains climate in addition to the past,
climatic limitation lends a certain character even to man's free activities.
It goes without saying that clothes, food and the like, as being tools,
assume a climatic character; but, even more essentially, if man is
already suffering climatic limitation when he attains sel-comprehen-
sion, then the character of climate cannot but become the character
of this self-understanding. It is existentially evident to us that accord-
ing to the changes in the climate in which man lives, he reveals all
sorts of distinctive characteristics in the expressions of his existence.
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16 CHAPTER I THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE CHAPTER I THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF CLIMATE 17
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So if climatic character becomes the character of man's self-understand-
ing, it is this climatic character that we need to study and discover.
What, then, should be our approach to such a thing as climatic
character?
The climatic limitation of human life is a problem of the whole
climatic and historical structure; it is not a concrete or specific problem
of man's way of life. In the latter case, the limitation only takes
a distinctive form in a given country at a given age and this is a
distinctiveness that we are not concerned to study. Man's' way of
life understood ontologically does not lead directly to a comprehen-
sion of the distinctive character of being; all it can do is to act as
go-between for such comprehension.
This being so, for an understanding of life lived in this distinctive
mould, we must apply ourselves to a direct comprehension of historical
and climatic phenomena. But would the latter understood merely
as objective lead to a full comprehension of climate in the sense in
which I have used it above? We must accept that it is only through
the interpretation of historical and climatic phenomena that we can
show that these phenomena are the expression of man's conscious
being, that climate is the organ of such self-objectivisation and self-
discovery and that the climatic character is the character of subjective
human existence. Thus as long as this enquiry is directed to the
distinctiveness of distinctive being, it is an existential comprehension;
but in far as it treats this distinctive way of life as the condition
of man's conscious being, it is ontological comprehension. Thus a
grasp of the distinctive historical and climatic make-up of human being
becomes an ontological existential comprehension.
In so far as climatic character is the subject of enquiry, it cannot
help being so.
Our enquiry will, therefore, proceed from observations of distinc-
tive climatic phenomena to the distinctive nature of human life. In
that climate is essentially historical climate, climatic types are simul-
taneously historical types. I do not seek to avoid this aspect, for it
is one that cannot and should not be avoided. But I shall attempt
to treat this enquiry specifically from the aspect of climate, in part
because it has been conspicuously neglected, a neglect which no doubt
arises from the difficulty of handling the problem in a scholarly man
nero Herder attempted a "Climatic Study of the Human Spirit" from
an exegesis of "Living Nature" and the outcome was, in Kant's
criticism, not so much the labour of the scholar as the product of the
poet's imagination. This is a hazard that confronts anyone who dares
to delve into the depths of the climatic problem. But I feel that it
must be faced, for the problem of climatic characteristics should be put
under the searchlight of radical research and be thoroughly clarified
in all its aspects, if only that historical enquiry might acquire a proper
concreteness.
(Drafted 1929; redrafted 1931; revised 1935.)
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CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON Cl.IMATE 133
the supplementation of one's own failings through the adoption of
another's strong points.
For over a thousand years until the Meiji Restoration, the Japa-
nese despised their own culture and looked up to that of China,
trying their best to assimilate it even in the every-day matters of
food, clothing, housing and the like. But in the same way that
Japanese food and the rest ended up conspicuously different from the
Chinese, so the less material culture adopted from China was no
longer Chinese. For the Japanese appreciates a delicate fineness;
he is unmoved by the sweep of grandeur that characterises Chinese
culture. Outward order is not as vital to him as is an out-and-out
inner refinement, conventional formality is not as attractive as in-
spiration in the heart. However much of Chinese culture he
absorbed, he did not succeed in assuming a Chinese character. This
notwithstanding, Japanese culture does keep alive the genius of the
China that existed between the Ch'in and Sung dynasties. By ac-
knowledging this, the Chinese could restore the power and grandeur
of their noble culture of the past, lost from the China of today. It
is here that could be discovered the way out of the impasse in which
the Chinese nature finds itself today.
China's revival must come. There must be a return to the
greatness of Han and T'ang culture, for the reconstruction of Chinese
civilisation is an integral and essential part of any new advances that
world culture achieves. The financial and military juntas that persist
in a course of turning China into a foreign dependency are the real
enemies of the people of China. When China's people stand squarely
by their own strength, then will begin the revival of her greatness.
(Drafted 1929; Revised 1943.)
Japan
japan's typhoon nature
Man's way of life has its own distinctive historical and climatic
structure, the individuality of which is shown with the greatest clarity
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134 CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 135
by climatic patterns governed by the limitations within a climate.
Climate, essentially, is historical; so climatic patterns are at the same
time historical patterns. I have applied the term "monsoon" to man's
way of life in the monsoon zone; the way of life of the Japanese
is also of the monsoon type for the Japanese is receptive and resignatory.
But the Japanese are not to be typified by this category alone.
Superficially, Japan and India have a number of features in common;
plants flourish as a result of the blessings of a vast ocean, rich sun-
shine and a plentiful supply of water. Yet whereas India lies between
the screens of high mountains to the north and the Indian Ocean and
enjoys seasonal winds regular in the extreme, Japan, sandwiched
between the broad continent of Mongolia and Siberia and the even
broader Pacific, suffers from seasonal winds that are most fickle and
the very opposite 6f regular. Both are washed by water absorbed
in great volume from the ocean; yet, although this water, in the form
of the typhoon is in a way seasonal, it has no parallel in the world
in the matter of its savage and sudden outbursts; and in the form
of heavy snowfalls, it again assumes an aspect of a kind rare in the
world. In virtue of such heavy rains. and snows, Japan's climate is
by far the most distinctive within the whole monsoon zone; its nature
can be said to be dual, combining both that of a tropical belt and
that of a frigid zone. Temperate areas to some extent exhibit this
dual nature, but only in the climate of Japan is the latter revealed
so forcefUlly. It is evinced most distinctly in plant life. Tropical
plants like rice, the most appropriate example, which require hot
sun and plently of humidity, grow profusely in Japan, so that the
summer scene is hardly distinguishable from the tropics. On the
other hand, plants which require a cold atmosphere and only a small
degree of moisture, such as com, flourish just as well. So in winter
Japan is covered in com and winter grass; in summer, in rice and
summer grass. But a single tree variety, incapable of such alternation,
displays this dual nature in itself. The picture of the bamboo, a
native of the tropics, covered in snow, is often quoted as a scene
peculiar to Japan. But, accustomed to bearing this weight of snow,
the bamboo has adopted a nature different from that in the tropics
and has become a curved and flexible variety distinctive to Japan.
Features such as these, discovered by a consideration of climate
in the abstract, are concrete factors in the history of man's life. Men
cultivate rice and tropical vegetables, com and the various cold-lone
vegetables, so the rain and the sunshine essential to such cultivation
affect and influence man's livelihood. Typhoons destroy the rice
ears and so threaten man's existence. Now the typhoon, while seasonal,
is also unexpected and sudden; thus it contains the dual nature of
man's way of life. So on top of the dual nature of the monsoon
climate, which, at one and the same time, in the form of copious
moisture blesses man with food and threatens him in the form of
violent winds and floods, and on top of the passive and resignatory
way of life that corresponds to this monsoon climate in general, there
is a further distinctive addition in Japan-the distinctive duality of
tropical and frigid zones, and the seasonal and the sudden.
Monsoon receptivity assumes a very unique form in the Japa-
nese for it is, first of all, both tropical and frigid. It is neither the
constant fullness of feeling of the tropics nor again the single-toned
tenacity of emotio.n of the cold lones. Although there is a plentiful
outflow of emotion, there is a steady tenacity that persists even through
change. Just like the changes of the seasons, the receptivity of the
Japanese calls for abrupt switches of rhythm. So the Japanese is full
of emotional vitality and sensitivity, lacking all continental phlegm.
Such vitality and sensitivity lead to exhaustion and an absence of
tenacity. But the recovery from this fatigue is not the effect of an
unresponsive repose; it is rather brought about by constant changes
of emotion resulting from abrupt switches of stimulus and mood.
136 CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CI.IMATE CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF :'IONSOON CLIMATE 137
But there is no alteration in the nature of emotions at such times
of exhaustion and recovery, so that behind this lack of tenacity there
lurks a certain dogged continuity. In other words, emotions may
change but, inwardly, they persist.
Japanese receptivity, in the second place, is seasonal and abrupt.
For in that a tenacity underlies emotional changes, and because,
through the constant switches, the same emotion persists, the change
is not simply seasonal and regular nor is it again entirely abrupt
or haphazard. Rather, while the changes are always unexpected, they
are switches to a new emotion conditioned in part by the old one.
Emotions can alternate with the unanticipated and abrupt intensity
of a seasonal yet savage typhoon. This emotional power is not char-
acterised by any tenacious sustention, but rather by a savagery akin
to that of Japan's own searing autumn winds. This has led often
to historical phenomena of the character not of a sustained struggle
but of a complete social overturning. And it has further produced
the distinctive Japanese cast of mind that exalts and sets great value
on emotion and abhors all tenacity. It is of deep significance and
highly appropriate that this mood of the Japanese should be symbolised
by the cherry blossoms, for they flower abruptly, showily and almost
in indecent haste; but the blooms have no tenacity-they fall as
abruptly and disinterestedly as they flowered.
Monsoon resignation also takes its own distinctive turn in Japan.
First of all, it is both tropical and frigid. In other words, it is neither
unresisting acquiescence of the tropical zone nor persistent and patient
doggedness of the frigid lone. For, although essentially resignation,
through resistance it becomes mutable and quick-tempered endurance.
Violent winds and deluge rains in the end enforce resignation on
man, but their typhoon nature provokes in him a fighting mood.
Thus, while the Japanese thought neither to submit passively to nor
to resist nature, he did attain an ill-sustained acquiescence. This is
the passivity that is evinced in Japan's distinctive self-abandonment
In second place, this resignation is seasonal and abrupt. A
resignation that includes resistance, precisely on account of this resist-
ance, is not a seasonal or a regular reiteration of resistance; nor
again is it an abrupt or haphazard resignation. Rather, within the
reiteration there is an abrupt suddenness of resignation. Resistance,
lurking behind this mask of resignation, can erupt with the unex-
pected savagery of a typhoon, yet once this storm of emotion has died
down, there remains an equally abrupt and calm acquiescence. The
seasonal and the abrupt within receptivity correspond directly to those
within resignation. Fight and resistance are admired almost to the
degree of savagery yet they do not develop into dogged persistence,
for graceful abandonment or acquiescence enhance such spirited re-
sistance and fight. In other words, an abrupt swing to resignation,
open forgetting and forgiving, are considered virtues by the Japa-
nese. The cast of mind that is symbolised by the cherry blossom is
based in part on this abrupt resignation and is revealed most ex-
plicitly in open-hearted throwing away of life. This, in the form of
the attitude under persecution of Japan's Christian martyrs, and
again more recently in the Russo-Japanese war provoked European
admiration. Anything that is grounded on resistance or fight is a
clinging to life. For all that, when this attachment to life was ex-
hibited in its most intense and objective aspect, the most prominent
and central feature of this attachment was the attitude that was
the very opposite-a complete contradiction of this tenacity. This
is shown to perfection in war. The spirit of Japanese swordsmanship
is the harmony of sword and calm meditation. In other words, the
spirit of war is heig-htcncdon account of this dogged attachment to and
transcending of life. These qualities all stem from Japan's "typhoon
resignation".
This, then, is the distinctive Japanese \Yay of life-a copious out-
flow of emotion, constantly changing, yet conceals perseverence beneath
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138 CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 139
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this change; at every moment in this alternation of mutability and
endurance, there is abruptness. This activity of emotions sinks to
resigned acquiescence in resistance, and underneath the exaltation of
activity there lies a quiet and suddenly apparent abandonment. This
is a quiet savagery of emotion, a fighting disinterest. Here we dis-
cover the national spirit of Japan. And we shall only find this natural
character manifested through the events of history, since in fact it was
built up by historical influences.
Man is essentially social, or relational. So his distinctive way
of life is manifested best of all through such relations and through
the associational attitudes formed in the process. The most familiar
of these relationships, as Aristotle pointed out, is that between man
and woman. The distinction made by the very use of the words 'man'
and 'woman' is already understood in terms of this basic relationship.
In other words, man plays one role in this relationship, woman the
other; a person unable to play one of these roles can become neither
man nor woman, and however much one unites such individuals,
one will still not effect a r:elationship of male and female. Thus by
the very use of the words 'man' and 'woman', we ascribe to the in-
dividual his function in this relationship. So though 'a person' can
be an individual entity, 'man' and 'woman' do not exist independently
of each other.
This relationship between male and female in Japan can be
traced by reading Japan's love poems, starting from those in the Kojiki
and the Nihon Shohi and proceeding through this most rich of all
source materials. Here is found a calm love concealed behind a
violence of passion, a love that is at once fighting yet selfless and
acquiescent. This Japanese type of love and the many artless and
disappointed loves pictured in the Kojiki possess a calm found neither
in the Old Testament nor in the Greek epics. Yet, at the same time
these loves have a typhoon savagery and a fighting power of a kind
that could exist neither in India nor in China. But it is in the lovers'
suicide that this calm and selfless resignation is shown at its most
clear and concrete. As time passed, this artlessness was lost; yet this
form of love is still discernible in the Heian period which saw in love
the "sadness in life" and in the Kamakura period, when love was
united with religion, and even in the Ashikaga period which glorified
the fundamental power of love. Buddhism in no way bedevilled love's
position. Rather, with its notions of worldly passions, it checked the
divorce of soul and body. In the same way, the lovers' suicide, the
favourite theme of Tokugawa literature, did not rest purely on a
spiritual belief in the other world; rather, it displays the affirmation
of love through a denial of life; the heart yearning for an eternity
of love is crystallised in this momentary exaltation. Even if it is
a departure from the way of man, in that, for the sake of the man-
woman role, it tramples on man's other roles, it yet still evinces the
character of the' distinctive Japanese type of love.
There is, then, in the Japanese type of love, first and foremost
an exaltation of love rather than a yearning for life. Love is not
the handmaiden of desire-it is the latter that acts as love's handmaiden.
So it is in love that there stands out an inseparable bond created by
desire, a completely insoluble bond between man and woman. Here,
there is a complete harmony of character expressed in terms of a
gentle love. But, secondly, love is always of the flesh, and never a
union of the spirit only. Love is never able to dispense with fleshly
desire as its tool so that a calm love of personality becomes at one
and the same time a burning passion. A bond never to be slackened
is attempted through the agency of the flesh which is separable; an
eternal longing of the soul explodes in a flash in the flesh. Thus,
thirdly, love becomes a valour which does not cling to the life in the
flesh; and, fourthly, there lies underneath all this an abrupt resigna.
tion-resignation that an indissoluble bond is hopeless in the flesh;
140 CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CUMATE 141
then fleshly love selflessly denies the flesh. Not only is this shown
at its height in the lovers' suicide; it is further indicated by the fact
that the Japanese, who always understand love as of the flesh, are
selfless in the flesh. So Japanese love preserves a quality of emo-
tion more refined than any such type of love as will selfishly cling to
fleshly desire while it understands love as a matter of the soul.
But to limit the 'relationship' between man and woman only to
one of unmarried love is to consider the abstract only. For this rela-
tionship must of necessity also include that between husband and
wife and between parent and child. But this relationship of parent
and child is not only that between husband and wife and the child
they have born; for this husband and wife, as well as possessing the
role of parent, are themselves the children of their own parents. So,
in addition to being man or woman, there is also the factor of a
person's status, as husband or wife, as parent or child. There can
be no man or woman who has not fulfilled the role of child. So the
male-female relationship is based in the associational attitude of the
family, in the relationships of husband and wife, parent and child
and so on. So the functions of these relationships developed in the
first place within the unit of the family as a whole; it is not the
case that the family comes into being through the association of man
and woman, husband and wife and so on.
Relationships between people as family members differ openly
between meadow, desert and monsoon climates. Meadow culture be-
gan with the piratical adventures of the Greeks. Adventurous males
who had become separated from their native pastures made attacks
on the Aegean coastlines; they began to build a rudimentary polis
and took as wives the women of the lands they had conquered. Here
there was the beginning of a new family, its constituents men who
had escaped from their native houses and women whose housholds
had been slaughtered. This is the historical background of the re-
quent stories of a wife killing her husband in the old Greek tradi
tions. Hence although from the very first the Greeks had a firm
tradition of ancestor worship and steadfastly clung to rites honouring
the hestia, once the polis was created, its significance came to dominate
that of the house. The family was understood in terms of husband
and wife; in the matter of lineage, descent was traced only back to
the father at the very best. In contrast, the desert family was regard-
ed in terms of a traditional existence which bore the burden of the
whole lineage from the very first ancestor. So even Jesus, born of
the Virgin, is the "son of Abraham", the "seed of David". But in
the way of life of the desert, this exalted state of the family yielded
place to the tribe, for it was the latter rather than the family that
was the unit of nomad life. Community of family life under the
strict surveillance of tribal solidarity strengthened this sense. However,
it was the monsoon family, particularly in China and Japan, that laid
the greatest stress of all on the community of family life. As with
the desert, there is the same power of lineage, but this was not dis-
sipated in the tribe.
"House" signifies the family as a whole. The latter is represented
by the head of the house, but it is the family as a whole that gives
the head of the house his authority; it is not the case that the house
is brought into existence at the whim of its head. The "house" is given
a substantial and distinctive character by the fact that its unity is
understood in historical terms. The family of the present shoulders
the burden of this historical house and undertakes liability for its
unity from past down into future. So the good name of the house
can make a victim even of the household head. The household mem-
ber, then, is not merely parent or child, husband or wife; he is also
a descendant of. his ancestors and himself an ancestor to those that
are to come. The 'house' thus evinces most starkly the fact that the
family as a whole takes precedence over its individual members.
142 CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF lolONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CI.IMATE 143
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The "house" in this sense stood out prominently as part of the
Japanese way of life; the family system was stressed as being an elegant
and beautiful custom. But where does the special character of this
family system lie? And will Japan's distinctive way of life disappear
as the family system falls into disuse?
What has been said of the specific character of Japanese love holds
good in entirety for the family way of life. Here, the point of enquiry
is the relationship not between male and female but between husband
and wife, parent and child, elder and younger brother or sister. This
relationship is, above all, that of gentle affection, aiming at a com-
pletely frank union. The artless ancients, when speaking of quarrels
between husband and wife or of jealousy, already display this sense
of warm and unreserved family affection. Again, the fine poem of
Okura, the Manyo poet-"5ilver or gold or jade, none are as precious
as my child"-has long been regarded as entirely appropriate to the
heart of the Japanese. Okura's family affection is revealed even more
directly by his poem "On Going Home From A Party";
"My sobbing child and his mother
Now wait for me to go home."
Such gentle affection can even be seen in the Kamakura warriors
who effected a great social revolution; Kumagaya Renshobo's reversal
of heart, for example, sprang from his affection for his child. Again,
in the No chants of the Ashikaga period the love between parent and
child is conceived as of a deep and fundamental power. It goes al-
most without saying that the literary arts of the Tokugawa period
used the affection between parent and child when they wished to
draw tears. Through every age, the Japanese strove for the sacrifice
of selfishness within the family. So there is a full realisation of the
concept of the fusion of self and other. But while this affection
is calm it is at the same time full of passion. The calmness of affec-
tion is not a mere fusion of emotions sunk in the depths of gloom;
it is a durability of emotions which lies behind fullness of feeling
and the mutations brought by the latter. But this calm is only achiev-
ed at the cost of the purge and the purification of powerful emotions.
50 the force that is directed towards unreserved unity within the
family, in spite of its outward calm, is very intense. Thus
the sacrifice of the self does not stop short at the needs of convenience
but is carried through to the extreme limits. Whenever it meets
with an obstacle, this quiet affection turns into ardent passion, forceful
enough even to overwhelm the individual for the sake of the whole
family. So, in third place, the family relationship takes the form
of a heroic and martial attitude, unsparing even of life itself. Notions
of vendetta carried on for the sake of parents in, for example, the
Tales of the Soga, indicate just how much such sentiments stirred
the hearts of the Japanese. A man was ready to sacrifice his life
for his parents or for the good name of the house, and, for the
individual concerned, this sacrifice was felt to possess the greatest
significance in life. Such was the heroic samurai, prepared to lay
down all for the good name of his house. The house as a whole was
always of greater import than the individual, so, as a fourth feature,
the latter threw away his life with the utmost selflessness. The most
striking feature of Japanese history is this readiness to stake one's life
for the sake of parent or child, or to cast away life for the house. So
the calm of family affection contains the sacrifice of self-centred-
ness; thus valour for the good of the family, in that it is not grounded
in selfishness, is not a dogged clinging to life.
Hence, the Japanese way of life regarded as that of a household
is none other than the realisation, through the family, of the distinc-
tive relationship of Japan-the fusion of a calm passion and a martial
selflessness. This relationship further became the basis of the con-
spicuous development of the 'house' itself, for this calm affection did
not permit man to be viewed either artificially or abstractly, and,
144 CHAPTER THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 145
as a result, it was inappropriate to the development of a larger com-
munity of men built on the consciousness of the individual. So the
concept of "house" in Japan takes on the unique and important
significance of, if you like, the community of all communities. This
is the real essence of the Japanese way of life and the Japanese family
system, built on this foundation, has roots more deeply laid than
any ideology.
It will be readily acknowledged that the family system has no
longer the prominence or power that it possessed in Tokugawa days.
But it would be harder to argue that the Japanese way of life today
is divorced from the house. Modern European capitalism tries to
see man as an individual; the family, too, is interpreted as a gathering
of individuals to setve economic interests. But it could not on any
account be argued that the Japanese, in spite of the adoption of
capitalism, ceased to see the individual in the 'house' and came to
regard the 'house' in an. association of individuals.
To cite the most everyday phenomenon, the Japanese understand
the house as "inside" and the world beyond it as "outside". Withih
this "inside", all distinction between individuals disappears. To the
wife, the husband is "inside", or "the man inside" or even "the house".
(These are the actual terms used of a husband.) To the husband,
the wife is "inside the house". The family, too, is "those within"-
distinguished clearly from anyone outside; but once within, all dis-
tinction disappears. Thus the "house", or the "inside" is regarded
as the family as a whole, a relationship admitting no discrimination,
but very strictly segregated from the "outside" world. A distinction
of this nature between "inside" and "outside" is not to be found in
European languages where, although one may speak of "inside" and
"outside" in reference to a room or a house, these terms are not used
of this family relationship. Contrasts between "inside" and "outside"
that possess a significance weighty enough for them to correspond to
Japanese usage, are, in the first place, that between inside and outside
of the heart of the individual, secondly between inside and outside
of a house, regarded as a building, and thirdly, between inside and
outside of a country or town. Hence. in this kind of distinction,
attention is focussed primarily on the confrontation between spirit
and flesh, between human and natural, and between the communities
of men on the broad scale; there is no thought of making family rela-
tionship the standard of distinction. Thus it would not be unfair
to say that the concepts of "inside" and "outside" in Japan lead
directly to a comprehension of her way of life.
Exactly the same phenomenon is revealed by house structure.
In other words, the house regarded as a structure of human relations
is reflected in the layout of a house regarded simply as a building.
Above all, the house exhibits an internal fusion that admits of no
discrimination. None of the rooms are set off from each other by
lock and key with a will to separation; in other words, there is
no distinction between individual rooms. Even if there is a parti-
tioning by shoji (sliding doors) or tusuma (screens), this is a division
within a unity of mutual trust, and is not a sign of a desire for
separation. So the close and undiscriminating unity of the house
does permit such partitioning by shoji or fusuma; but the very fact
of the need for partition within this undiscriminating unity is an
indication of the passion it contains. So such partitions indicate the
existence of antagonisms within the house; yet their removal is in
itself a show of a completely unbarriered and selfless openness.
In second place, the house is quite unmistakably distinguished
from "outside". Even if there is no lock on the rooms, there is al-
ways one on the door that leads to the outside; there may also be
beyond this a fence, a wall, and, in extreme cases, a protective thicket
or a moat. When a Japanese returns home from the "outside", he
removes his getq or shoes, and by this very act he draws an explicit
distinction between "inside" and "outside".
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146 CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 147
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Thus the "house" continues as ever in Japan,-and continues
not just as a formal entity but as a determinant of the Japanese way
of life. The degree to which the character of the latter is unique
becomes clearer with a comparison with the European way of life.
A house in Europe is partitioned off into individual and independent
rooms which are separated by thick walls and stout doors. These
doors can all be secured by intricate locks so that only key-holders
may come and go freely. In principle, this is a construction stressing
individuality and separation. The distinction between "inside" and
"outside" as understood first and foremost as one of the heart of
the individual is reflected in house construction; it becomes the "in-
side" and "outside" of the individual room so that to go out of a
room in Europe has the same significance as to go out of a house in
Japan. Inside the room, as an individual, that is, one may strip
nak.ed; but once one goes from the room and joins the family as
a whole, one should always be neat and tidy. Once one takes a
step out of the room, there is little difference whether it be to the
dining-room inside the house or to a street restaurant. In other words,
the dining room, within the house, is already the equivalent of "out-
side" to the Japanese; yet, at the same time, "outside" in Europe,
a restaurant or the opera, plays the same role as the tea-room or
the living room in Japan. Hence, in one aspect, the unit equivalent
to the house in Japan is narrowed down to the individual room with
its lock and key; but, another aspect, the family circle in Japan
is broadened in Europe to extend to the whole of the community.
In Europe there is no indissoluble relation, but merely a loose social
grouping of individuals which does admit separation. Yet although
this extends beyond the room as the unit, it is still "inside" from
the aspect of a common livelihood, as are the parks or the town
streets. Hence, while what corresponds to the wall or the fence
of the Japanese house is narrowed down to the lock on the individual
room, in other aspects this same equivalent is broadened to become
the city walls or the surrounding moat. The city gateway in Europe
corresponds to the Japanese house doorway. So, in Europe, the house.
midway between the two units of room and city wall, is not of great
significance. Man is individualist in the extreme; so, in addition to
segregation, there is social intercourse, cooperation within divisitln.
In other words, the house has no prescriptive functions.
In outward aspects, the Japanese have copied the European way
of life; but it would not be unfair to say that they remain almost
entirely uninfluenced by Europe in the matter of their inability to
base their social and public life on individualism. Who would think
he could walk on an asphalt r,oad in stockinged feet? Who would
walk in his shoes-even if they be western shoes-on Japanese tatami
matting? Where then is to be found this identity of "inside" the
house, (in Japan), with "inside" the town. (in Europe)? It is not
European in spirit to consider "the town" as completely alien to and
outside of "the house"; and only in that he lives in an open, un-
partitioned house is the Japanese still prescribed, as he always has
been, by his house.
So it must be allowed that the way of life as seen in the house
does very strikingly exhibit the distinctive character of the people.
And it was by way of the concept of the house as a whole unit that
the Japanese came to be aware of themselves as a whole. Mankind
as a whole was understood first in terms of Kami, the Japanese spirit
or deity; and in historical tenps, this Kami was the ancestor of the
house as a whole. This was the exceedingly plain and homely con-
ception of wholeness or unity in early times, but, surprisingly enough,
even as Japan's history progressed, this homely vital force continued
to stay alive. The Meiji Restoration was achieved as the result of
an awakening-of Japan's people expressed in the form of the cry.
"Revere the Emperor; expel the foreigner". But this awakening was
148 CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CUMATE 149
in actual fact grounded in a revival of the spirit of the myths that
regarded Japan as the land of the kami, the latter faith growing from
the worship of the deity enshrined at Ise, the sanctum sanctorum.
There can be no parallel in the rest of the world for this phenomenon;
for a religious concept of wholeness was able, even in an age of
the advance of culture, to act as the driving power of social revolu-
tion. So even the awakening of the Japanese people which blazed
at the time of the foreign wars of the Meiji period was not a topic
of theory in and for itself but was rather interpreted in terms of the
analogy of the old traditional family unity. The Japanese, it was said,
were one great family which regarded the Imperial House as the home
of its deity. The people as a whole are nothing but one great and
unified house, all stemming from an identical ancestor. Thus the
entire state is "the house within the household" and the fence that
surrounds the latter is broadened in concept to become the boundaries
of the state. Within the borders of this state as a whole, there should
be the same unreserved and inseparable union that is achieved with-
in the household. The virtue that is called filial piety from the
aspect of the household becomes loyalty from the standpoint of the
state. So filial piety and loyalty are essentially identical, the virtue
prescribing the individual in accordance with the interests of the
whole.
The claims of this loyalty and filial piet}', viewed as a single virtue,
include a fair degree of patent irrationalities, whether regarded
theoretically or historically. The family is the alpha of all human
communities, as being a unit of personal, physical, community life;
the state is the omega of all human communities, as being a unit
of spiritual community life. The family is the smallest, the state the
largest unit of union. The building up of the connection is differ-
ent in each. So to regard family and state in the same light as
human structures is mistaken. Further, speaking now historically,
the filial piety that was stressed so heavily in the Tokugawa period
does not by any means exhaust the sum total of the prescriptions
laid on the individual in virtue of his membership of the house
as a whole. In China, the relationship between father and son was
denominated by a separate term but "filial piety" in the Tokuga'ra pe-
riod signified only the son's relationship of service to his parents.
In the same way, loyalty was understood in the narrow sense of the
personal relationship between retainer and feudal lord, and had no
connection with the state as a whole. Hence the reverence for the
Emperor which symbolised the reversion to the state as a whole
was essentially different from loyalty as it was understood in the To-
kugawa period. Thus, the fact of the correspondence of the rela-
tionship of service to a parent with that of service to one's feudal
lord is no proof of the correspondence of loyalty is the sense of
reverence for the Emperor (loyalty that is, in the significance not
of an individual relationship but of a reversion of the individual
to the whole) with filial piety understood as the prescriptions laid
on the individual by the family as a whole.
Even so, there is a deal of historical sense in the assertion of
identity between loyalty and filial piety, both of them directed towards
an understanding of the nation as a whole in tenos cf the analogy
of the house. This is the familiar trait of the Japanese; the attempt
to interpret the nation as a whole in terms of the distinctive Japa-
nese way of life. And the simple fact that this particular and unique
way of life was feasible hints that while the distinctiveness of the
Japanese was best exemplified in the way of life of the household,
at the same time in the way of life of the nation as a whole a similar
distinctiveness was reflected.
In Japan, one-ness of the nation was first interpreted in the
religious sense; this is a circumstance of primitive society that can
be understood only by way of myths. Before man felt or thought
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150 CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF IIIONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 151
N
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as an individual, his consciousness was that of the group; anything
disadvantageous to the livelihood of the group restricted the actions
of the individual in the form of a taboo. In a society of this nature,
mankind as a whole was conceived in terms of a mystic force, so
that a reversion to this mystic force was nothing other than a return
to the whole; worship was merely the expression of the whole in terms
of the rite of worship. Hence those who directed such rites came
to be invested with a god-like authority as being representatives of
thi. whole. The rainmaker became Zeus. This is a trend common
to primitive religions; but in Japan we can see it in model fashion.
As well as hami (deity) Amaterasu Omikami was also the superin-
tendent of ritual. The most explicit expression of such conditions
is to be found in the fact that ritual became government.
Thus the primitive Japanese were a unified religious group secured
and guaranteed by such rituals. Although there were sad deficiencies
in military and economic organisation and capacity, yet the religious
bond created a highly compact solidarity and was primarily the source
of their ability to send a considerable military force as far afield as
Korea. This is also evident from the nationwide discoveries of
tomb-period relics, which indicate the existence of the worship of
mirror, jewel and sword. And this community of men as such a
religious grouping, just as that of the household, was the community
of a fusion of feeling that demanded no awareness from the individual
of his identity as an individual. So this religious grouping came
to be the most outstanding embodiment of the Japanese way of life.
Japan's myths may well show trace of all manner of primitive
faiths. Yet the achievement of a compact unification through the
agency of a single religious ritual has no parallel in the myths of
either Greece or India. In this particular, only those of the Old
Testament stand comparison. However the latter make clear distinc-
tion between god and man. whereas in Japan there is an affinity
between the two, understood in terms of a blood connection. In
the Old Testament, God's dealings with man are imbued with a strict
and wilful authority; but in Japan, when kami approaches man, he
never commands or wills; he is, rather. characterised by a gentle and
emotional affection. This character is shown in true form by the
descriptions of Amaterasu Omikami (the Sun Goddess). This is no
more or less than a proof of the indissoluble unification and quiet
affection that characterise the relationship of man within his religious
grouping. The gods of Greece are not dissimilar in the fact of their
proximity to man; but, in addition, they already reflect a relation-
ship based on intellect and on the characteristics of a republican polity.
They indicate, in other words, the Greek incapacity of unification
within a single ritual.
Indissoluble unification within a single ritual was not of the same
kind as the union of the spirit of the Christian Church. For, it was
a union both in religion and of man, man who is flesh. Hence it
was exemplified in the form not of the church of a God that transcend-
ed national division. but of a national unity. In the Church of God
ritual was concerned in great measure with the soul and did
not develop into the handling of the affairs of this life on earth;
but ritual in the context of national unity easily became, in another
aspect, administration of that nation's affairs. The Emperor, like
the Pope, was the representative of the whole; but, unlike the Pope,
he was at the same time the sovereign of the state. Hence. the in-
separable union of the religious group, as being that of man who
is flesh, was realised above all in separation.. So it was in,evitable
that passion should be evident. Amaterasu Omikami, characterised
by calm affection, could turn into the resolute god of fire and thunder.
Here is an indication of the dual-natured "calm in passion" of the
national way of life.
While being the unity of a religious grouping, this was also very
much a union of, and not transcending, this world. It was for this
152 CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 153
reason that this inseparable union was realised in separation. So
this coming together always contained the elements of confrontation
and of struggle. War had already broken out between the kami-
the myths are full of stories of war-so that union founded on a
religious grouping could never be characterised by harmony only and
achieve complete elimination of such elements of antagonism. This
character is what people call the Japanese martial SpIrit.
But this latter did not lead the Japanese to anything in the
form of a disintegration into innumerable polis. It was through
war that a single ritual had been attained and in the same way war
showed the path to inseparable union. The achievement of the latter
was made possible by the selflessness that lay beneath the martial
SpIrIt. The wars that are the subject of the myths were all selfless-
though this did not of itself eliminate the spirit of fierceness and
fury from such fighting, but resulted rather in the fact that such
fierce wars could switch abruptly to unity and harmony. Here again
we find the duality of a martial selflessness that characterises the
life of the nation.
Thus the ancient unification of the nation within this religious
grouping has a distinctive character capable of interpretation by the
house analogy. It was a passionate and yet placid union, a martial
and yet selfless fusion. Because of this distinctive character, the Japa-
nese warrior, even in the fiercest of fighting, could still look on his
opponent as a brother, for it was not a part of the Japanese spirit
to feel unremitting hatred for an enemy. Here we can see the ground
in which Japan's morality took seed. Before the evolution of moral
concepts, men's actions and minds were evaluated in terms of 'noble'
or 'clean', 'dirty' or 'mean'. In this evaluation, there is already a
reflection of the distinctive national character.
From this distinctive evaluation, we can pick out several outstand-
ing elements. In first place, we see here the religious belief that
directed the life of the nation towards that of a religious grouping.
Nobility was recognised above all in the kami who presided over the
ritual; so the motive force that led to unity was the source of ail
values. It is expressible in terms of reverence for the Emperor. In
second place, value is set on the indissoluble union of man. A gentle
heart and quiet affection were attributes indispensable for the great
man and such qualities were understood not merely in terms of personal
affections within the family circle but as the basis of mutual relation-
ships reaching through the nation. In one sense, then, this was
esteem of affection between men; but in another sense it became
esteem for social justice. In third place, value was set in the nobility
that characterised the warrior's selflessness. Valour was noble and
beautiful, cowardice mean and unclean. But sheer brute force was
ugly and unbecoming, brutality the ugliest of all. For though valour
might well exist in it, there was also a strong taint of tenacious and
selfish lust, and the nobility of valour lies in its disregard of self.
Thus the bravery of the warrior must on all account be accompanied
by a selfless resignation. In this sense, nobility and meanness came
to be of higher value than life itself.
Myths and traditions show that these were the three prime virtues
of the ancients. However, in that this characteristic of ancient times
was based on the primitive faith of a union through religion, is it
still discernible after the swift advance of culture? Could this in-
dissoluble union of the nation still persist even after the dawn of
a clear awareness of the individual as an entity in himself?
The period of which we have been speaking, that of the myths
and traditions, and that of the tumuli, culminated in the construc-
tion of tomb-mounds of vast grandeur and military contact with
Korea. It was, again, the age in which a stout and nation-wide union
of the Japanese was achieved as a unification by way of ritual. In
this light we can examine also the ages that followed, using as a
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154 CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 5 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 155
link. for this examination the great social upheavals of Japanese history
The first such upheaval, nationwide unification in a ritual, achieved
a society based on a feudal and religious structure. The feudal lords,
in virtue of the religious authority of the Emperor-that of mirror.
jewels and sword. that is-represented the entirety of the people of
their territories. However, contact with the Chinese and their culture
in Korea gradually drained the freshness from these primitive faiths
and military and economic power took the place of religious authority
as the force by which the local lord exercised sway. At this
point unification by ritual came to include elements of unification by
administration, a process heralded by a trend towards the centralisa-
tion of authority through an increase of shrine officials. Thus it
was the very Chinese culture that had undermined the authority of
religion that was taken up as the weapon to fashion a new admin-
istrative unification. As a result, the formation of centralised authority
followed on the overthrow of a primitive feudal society. The Taika
Reformation achieved a social structure of national socialism based
on the principle of public land ownership; and even such drastic
reform could be effected without even the smallest civil disturbance
because of the religious authority that lay behind economic power.
The third of the great upheavals brought a recrudescence of
feudalism in the form of the Kamakura Shogunate. A social system
based on joint land ownership was unable to satisfy the natural urge
to own something privately and the powerful and the mighty, con-
cealed behind their vast manors, the curse of common ownership,
worked away quietly for the establishment of private ownership;
finally, the military power fostered in such manors brought the second
age of feudalism, constituted by a Shogun and the protective manorial
lords dependent on him. And even while there was no repeal of tbe
legal system current in the period of public owriership, the military
dictates of the Shogun came in practice to have the validity of law.
The fourth major upheaval was that of the Age of Civil Wars (or
Fighting Barons); although feudalism itself was not upset, the con-
trolling class was overthrown and its place taken by a force emanat-
ing from the people as a result of insurrectionary movements. At
the same time, with the development of the town, the economic power
of an urban pqpulation began slowly and quietly to overrun power
of a military nature.
The fifth upheaval, the Meiji Restoration, saw the overthrow
once more of feudalism and the achievement again of a centralisation
of authority. The Emperor, who had possessed no physical power
throughout the long years of feudalism, took precedence as of old
over the Shogun and became again the symbol of the nation as a
whole. Primitive faiths died hard.
Using these several upheavals as a mirror to the age in which
they occurred, we can discover to what extent there was a historical
realisation of the distinctive national character and of the' moral
thinking that grew from it. Reverence for the Emperor, the symbol
of unity of the religious grouping, was indeed the motive power
behind the Meiji Restoration. Feudal princes attempting to resist
this by military power alone could achieve no division among the
forces working for the Restoration 'and they disintegrated eventually
in the face of the nation as a whole. Again in the fourth upheaval,
that of the Age of the Fighting Barons, "nobility" as it was under-
stood in appears prominently in the guise of bushido. The
essential spirit of bushido was to know shame, to feel ashamed in face
of meanness, cowardice, baseness and servility. Here is a model in-
stance of morality understood in terms not of good and evil but
of the noble and the mean. Again the esteem accorded by antiquity
to affection reap'pears in the age of the Kamakura Shogunate during
the ascendancy of the all-powerful Kamakura Buddhist tenets of
benevolence and charity. The concept of indissoluble union was
156 CHAPTER! THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER! THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 157
understood in terms of a practical realisation of unconditional altru-
ism and the goal of action became an affection of the kind that would
throwaway life selflessly. High regard for this same affection and
the sense of social justice that grew from it are reflected in the theories
of joint land ownership of the Taika Reforms, the second upheaval.
With the national unity of a religious group backed by the newly
adopted Buddhism and its ideals, this was an attempt to realise such
ideals in practical fonn.
Moral thinking of this nature must be given special attention
in our enquiry, for though essentially, of course, it is in no way
peculiar to Japan, yet it was understood with a distinctive power in
Japan. And it was in the distinctive national traits of the like of a
stillness of passion and the selflessness of the warrior that the peculiar
character of this realisation was based.
(1931)
b) The Uniqueness of Japan
When asked for my impressions of anything unusual after. my
first visit to Europe, all that I could do was to reply with a very
firm "No". There was a great deal that impressed me deeply, but
in the matter of the rare or the unusual Europe offered nothing of
the standard of the Egyptian or Arabian deserts that I saw en route.
However, on my return to Japan at the end of my travels, I was made
suddenly and keenly aware of the strange character of Japan, a strange-
ness in no way inferior to that of the Arabian desert, a strangeness
which makes Japan unique in the world. I propose to discuss here
the nature of and the reason for this strangeness of which I became
aware so suddenly.
The word mezurashii (strange) is said to derive from mezuru,
meaning "to prize" or "to value"; but, judging from its everyday usage
at least, there seems to be no essential connection with the latter.
For example, even though there might be some sense of "prizing"
the 'wannth' in the context "It is strangely wann for winter", this
is certainly not true of the 'cold' in "Its unusually cold". So in
essence "strange" and "value" must be set apart. The basic sense of
mezurashii is "unusual" or "rare". On the basis of the premise of
"the usual" or "the nonnal", it appears as "the unusual" or "the
abnonnal". Some degree of appreciation of the nonnal and every-
day are essential for the recognition of the abnonnal or the strange.
Again the abnormal and the strange are not to be found where every-
thing is as usual in what has already been recognised as nonna!.
Thus for one who had understood the normal appearance of a land-
scape as covered in plantlife, the desert was strange or abnormal in
the extreme. But, at the same time, to one who had understood the
nonnal appearance of European architecture from examples seen in
Japan, European cities, where buildings were as they should be, had
nothing strange to offer. Whereas a text-book definition of desert
in tenns of the absence of plant-life gives no understanding of desert
conditions, the Western architecture of Japan's cities did give me a
concrete and positive insight into the conditions of Europe's cities.
However, the strangeness that I felt on returning to Japan meant
one of two things; either Japan where I had lived for so long and
to which my eyes were accustomed, had come to possess qualities
different from what I had hitherto considered as normal, or else Japan
remained unchanged and it was in my interpretation of the nonnal
that there had been the transfonnation. Or perh'l(ls it was not just
one of these factors but both of them that were at play. In other
words, the nonnal condition in which I had lived and which I had
grown used to seeing through the years remained identical; but there
was exposed a much more fundamental condition lying underneath
the surface which I had failed to perceive hitherto and which was
now interpreted as rare or abnonnal in contrast to what I had come
to understand previously as nonnal.
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158 CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 159
Let me clarify this with the aid of a familiar example. Cars and
trams are an everyday sight in Japan, so much so that it would be
rare for a Japanese, nowadays at least, to marvel at these imports from
or copies of the West. So it is not a matter of sensing anything
strange about the cars or trams in Europe; rather it is a case of the
Japanese being startled at the dirtiness of the taxis. the small dimen-
sions of the trams and so on. The latter, for instance, in every town,
give an impression of skimpiness (with the sole exception, of the
window glass) far greater than the Japanese is accustomed to seeing
at home. The underground railways too seem to be on a lighter scale
than the Tokyo Government Line. Whether they are in fact smaller
in size and lighter in weight is not in question here. (Perhaps, in
point of fact, they are. The carriage ceilings on underground rail-
ways always seemed to me to be much lower than in Japan.) Anyhow,
the fact remains that this is the impression we are given and there
is nothing of the strange or the abnormal about this impression. Yet
when I came back to Japan and looked at the cars or the trams in
the streets, I did indeed feel that I was watching a wild boar rampag-
ing through fields. When a tram surges through the houses that
line the tracks, they seem to crouch and bow spiritlessly just as the
commoner would grovel in face of a feudal lord's procession. The
tram is taller than a single-storied house, longer than a house frontage
and so stoutly built that if it were to run amuck, one has the impres-
sion that it would be the flimsy wooden houses that would be smashed
into smithereens by its powerful onsurge. When a tram passes. it
completely blots from view the houses on the opposite side of ~
street and only the sky can be seen above its roof. Even a car seems
to loom large in Japan; in a narrow street it appears to block the
way like a whale in a canal and it can even seem both taller and
somehow longer than a house. But in Europe these means of com-
munication are dwarfed by the houses; they are treated as tools of
communication, as retainers in the service of city or individual, and
their appearance fits their status perfectly. Yet in Japan these tools
or servants overwhelm and overbear man, his house and even his
town. Cars and trams are the same in both cases only in the matter
of appearance and, roughly speaking, size; yet it is indeed remarkable
and unusual that these identical objects can have inherent in them
such a different balance-or lack of it-with their surroundings, be
it house or town. Previously, I had not noticed any such dispropor-
tion, and when I went to Europe and saw these objects in their
original proportion I felt only that they were small and did not
spot any basic difference in balance. In objects seen everyday no
absence of proportion was noticed; in addition, the original propor-
tion, as being customary, was regarded as the most apt. However,
after the return, this absence of proportion was both recognisable
and strange, for there was now the realisation that although one had
understood what was regarded as the most apt proportion, its defects
had not been noticed even though they stared one in the face. So,
working from it as a basis, one made a patent discovery of the defects
of what was originally regarded as in proportion.
The absence of balance thus discovered (a true condition of
the urban scene in Japan) was already a part of what has been for
long felt to be the tangle and the disorder characterising Japan's
modem civilisation. But we never appreciated that it was exemplified
in such open, naked, candid and laughably strange terms. We, the
Japanese, approached the problems of widening roads and facilitating
car or tram transport only from the aspect of convenience, which only
served to magnify the lack of balance between car, tram and road
on the one hand, and house or town on the other. We are given
modem, first-class roads one after another by our new city-planners;
in dimension and the matter of pavements they are up to the standard
of those of any European city. But in Europe, roads of this kind
160 CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 161
are lined by rows of tall tenement houses, a hundred of them even
lining a short street. The ratio of street area to house then is very
small. The same length of street in Japan would be lined by only
a dozen or so houses, even allowing for the houses to be of the same
frontage. Japan's houses, flat and low in the urban areas at least,
seem to bite the ground; only the roads, open to the sky, give any
sense of spaciousness and as a result their most obvious functions
seem to be to offer free passage to the wind and to act as a collect-
ing place for swirls of dust. In Europe's cities, even though there
is little rain and wind to bring rubbish, the matter of keeping roads
as dean and tidy as a corridor within a house is no light burden
economically, even when the ratio of road surface per house is as
insignificant as it is. The cost of the same task in Japan, where
rainfall is heavy and mud plentiful, where the rubbish output is
high-because of humidity-and where again the area of road surface
per house is several times larger, would no doubt rise to ten times
the figure for Europe. Roads as extravagant as this, broad and open
to the sky, holding back rows of houses far meaner than any in
Europe-these are Japan's wonderful, perhaps tOO wonderful, roads.
In Japan the road is no longer a practical tool used for purposes of
communication; it has become an extravagant luxury for which, for
some reason or other, man is prepared to make his life miserable.
Such roads, to seek for a more basic origin, spring from the
unduly wide and sprawling structure of the Japanese city. If New
York is the best example in the world of a city suffering from height,
then Tokyo is the most appropriate instance of a city suffering because
of its sprawling character. The area covered by Tokyo's houses is
said, for instance, to be several times that of Paris; even if the areas
were identical, the drains that are adequate for Paris (to confine
ourselves to the matter of the difference in rainfall only) would be
far from satisfactory in the case of Tokyo. And since Tokyo's area
is several times that of Paris, Tokyo would require several times
the amount of public facilities that suffice for Paris, with the result
that it would only be at a fantastic outlay that Tokyo could be
equipped with merely the basic and essential facilities of a modern
capital. To change the wording; Tokyo's sprawling nature is the
precise antithesis of the character most suitable to the installation of
facilities appropriate to the modern city. It is not only a question of
drainage; the remarkable extension of roads and tram routes, the
vast amount of electric cable and gas piping that is required, the
time and the nervous energy consumed in travelling-all these, it
could be alleged with reason, stem from Tokyo's sprawling character.
In Japan, in other words, the greater the city the greater the in-
convenience. Both economically and mentally, urban life demands
tremendous outlay, yet life does not become in the least any more
pleasant. And in the last analysis, this all comes back to the absence
of proportion between city and house.
Then why do Japan's houses, completely out of balance with
cars, trams, even with roads and cities, still continue to grovel almost
at ground level, truly and grotesquely small in the midst of a great
city? It will be said this is all rooted in an economic cause; that
Japan is not as rich as Europe and that this is why high-storied build-
ings do not soar upwards toward the sky above Tokyo. But when
one considers the immense waste as a result of the sprawling, it is
difficult to accept this reason. If one totalled the construction cost
of several dozen grovelling little shacks and added in land expenses
and those of the various sources of waste mentioned above, it would
be difficult to say which were the cheaper-this, or a tall and imposing
ferro-concrete building. So it is not because of the lack of economic
power that the Japanese do not build such tall buildings in their
cities. The true reason is simply that the latter are not constucted
by associational or cooperative methods. So we must ask now why
162 CHAPTEll 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATUIlE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTEll 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATUIlE or MONSOON CUMATE 16S
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the Japanese fail to choose this method when it is the more convenient.
the more pleasant, and the only method which achieves results worthy
of the word city.
One must look to the house itself to discover the reason. So our
next problem is the character and the circumstances of the Japanese
house.
The house in most European cities, with the exception of the
homes of the rich, is not an individually inhabited and separate
structure. You enter a building and there are doors to your right
and left, each a "house"; you climb a staircase and again there are
"houses" to right and left, each with its door, ten of them on the
fifth floor, twelve on the sixth and so on, each leading off from the
corridor and each a "house". Again if you go from the entrance
through the garden to another entrance way, you find an identical
staircase and an identical passage with the same significance leading
up and through the same building. This passage is, so to speak,
an extension of the road; its original purpose, in fact, is to serve as a
road or a pathway. So if you go along this "street" and go through
any of the "house" doorways, you come to another corridor or passage,
leading through the centre of the house, on to which open the doors
of individual rooms. These doors can all be locked so that each room
by one motion of the hand can be made into an independent and
self-contained "house". Such a room can be lived in as a house, with
those who do not belong to the family unable to cause any trouble
or worry. In this sense, then, even the passageway inside a house
has all the qualifications of a street, as is shown very distinctly by the
fact that when the postman delivers a registered letter to a person
renting a single room, he must go through the corridor in the middle
of the building and then through the passageway inside the house
to reach the addressee's room. Nor is it only the postman; it is the
same in the case of the errand.boy from the book shop or the depart-
ment store. In this instance, it is the interior of the individual's room
that corresponds to the porch of the Japanese house. If this be the
case, then the street reaches right up to the door of this room and
its occupant thus has direct contact both with street and town.
But this can also be regarded from completely the opposite point
of view. The occupant of the room goes into the house passage-
way in the same clothing as he wears customarily in his own room;
to go into the next corridor, he may just stick on his hat. He goes
down the stairway and out of the building into the "corridor" beyond-
the street-with no further change of or additions to his clotping.
This street is washed by the rain in the mornings so that it is no
dirtier than the corridor inside the building; (indeed, there are
instances where it is the latter that is dirtier than the asphalt road).
In fact the only differences between the two are that, in the case of
the street, the sky appears and there are no means of keeping it
warmed in winter. Someone may go across the street to a restaurant
or to a coffee shop to listen to music or play cards. There is no
difference between this action and that of walking along a long cor-
ridor to the dining room or the reception room of a large mansion.
Nor is this restricted to someone living alone in a single room; it
occurs every day in. the case of a whole family. The gathering of
the Japanese family in the living room to gossip or listen to the radio
has the same significance as the visit of the European to the coffee
shop to listen to music or to play cards. Coffee shop equals sitting
room; street equals corridor. In this light, the entire town is the
equivalent of a single house. If a man locks his door and goes thus
beyond the one barrier that separates him from society, he enters
public restaurants, public tea-rooms, public libraries and gardens.
Thus corridor is street and street corridor; there is no distinct
barrier between the two. For, in one aspect, the scope of the mean
ing of "house" is narrowed down to a single room, in another it is
164 CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 165
broadened to include the whole of the town. In other words, house
is not duly significant; only individual and society are left.
But in Japan, where there is no question of corridor becoming
street or street becoming corridor, the house stands out most distinctly
of all. Its barrier, be it porch or door, establishes a positive separa-
tion between street and corridor, between without and within. A
Japanese takes off his shoes as soon as he enters a porch at;ld does
not put them on again until he goes beyond it. Nor does postman
or errand-boy pass further than this barrier. Coffee shop and restau-
rant are entirely different buildings, in no sense the equivalent in
purpose of the dining room or the living room within the house.
The latter are private to a degree with not the slightest character of
the public about them.
This is the type of house that the Japanese prefer to live in
and in which only they can relax. However small it be, this is the
sort of requirement they ask for in a house. Now what is the attrac-
tion that prompts such attachment? On the outside, the house is
quite detached from the street; but within, there is nothing of the
nature of the independence of an individual room. Fusuma and
shoji do act as partitions but they have no atmosphere of an indica-
tion of a desire for antagonistic or protective separation of the kind
expressed by the turning of a key in a lock; nor indeed do they
possess the capabilities of becoming such. Fustlma and shoji have
no power of resistance against anyone desiring to open them and their
function as partitions, in a sense that is, always depends on the trust
of others and their respect of the expression of the wish for separa-
tion indicated by the simple fact that they are drawn. In other words,
within the "house", the Japanese feels neither need of protection
against others nor any distinction between himself and others. A
key indicates a desire for separation from the desires of others while
fusuma and shoji show a unification of desires and are no more than
a means of partitioning a room in this spirit of absence of separation.
They have only the significance of a screen in the centre of a Western
room. Within the house, there is no brandishing of keys as protectors
of the individual's property. Thus the characteristics of the Japanese
house are an absence of internal partitioning and the variety of the
forms of key (including tall fences and formidable thickets) as pro-
tections against the world outside. So the attraction lies in this tiny
centre of unity in the middle of the wide world.
But, it will no doubt be asked, is it not possible also to preserve
such a tiny world in the European tenement house? However, this
kind of building demands common action when it is ~ under construc-
tion and again for its very existence it anticipates an attitude of those
who live in it. Even if a room does not look immediately on to a
passageway and has no means of direct intercourse with that next
to it, yet it is still only a part of a much larger structure and sharing
of facilities-for heating, hot water, the elevator-is inevitable. Such
sharing, such community living is just what gives the Japanese his
greatest misgivings and leads him to create his firmest partition be-
tween his house and the world outside. Europe's strongest partition
in the past was the city wall; now it is the state frontier. Neither
of these exist in Japan. Castle towns came to have a perimeter moat
and dyke in the years just before and after the Momoyama period,
but these were defensive works built by a group of samurai in prepara-
tion for attack from outside and were not the symbols of a desire
on the part of the town to create a barrier or partition between
itself and other such urban centres. So it is the fence or the wall
round the house or the locked door in Japan that corresponds to
Europe's city ~ l l Thus in the same way as the European has been
conditioned and disciplined over the years by the world within his
city wall, so the Japanese has been moulded within his much more
confined world inside his house. Within the city wall men came into
166 CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE 167
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a group directed against the common enemy and protected their lives
by their combined powers; any danger to joint interests was a danger
to the individual's and to his neighbour's very existence. Cooperation
became the basis and the keynote of life and prescribed every detail
of life. Recognition of duty stood far in the forefront of that of
any moral claims. Yet at the same time, cooperation, the submergence
of the individual in most other cases, here gave a strong stimulus to
individuality, so that the individual's rights, the correlative of his
obligations, stood in the same way in the forefront of recognition.
So the symbols of this way of life are "wall" and "key". But inside
of the small world within the fence in Japan, cooperation did not
envisage a common enemy endangering life but sprang rather from a
natural affection so strong that it would readily call forth a spirit of
complete self-sacrifice. Affection stands in front of awareness of
obligation in the relationships between man and wife, parent and
child, elder and younger brother; for though the individual gladly
effaces himself yet in such effacement he still feels fullness in life.
If cooperation depends on the individual for its full development,
then it was only natural that it made little advance within this small
world where the individual effaced himself so readily. In such cir-
cumstances, the individual never thought of standing on his rights
nor did he come to the point of recognising the obligations involved
in associational life. The environment prompted the advance of the
delicate feelings appropriate to it, sympathy, modesty, reserve and
consideration. Such feelings only had currency within the house and
lost their validity in any relations with the unfriendly world outside;
so the reverse of the picture is that one step beyond the porch of
the Japanese house brought the preparedness for dealings with an
aggressive enemy that went naturally with an outlook so unsociable.
Hence the fence round the Japanese house corresponds exactly to the
European city wall and the key. Thus the more insistent the demand
for the abolition of reserve within the house, the more intense becomes
the repugnance for cooperation outside.
The Europeanisation and Americanisation of Japanese society is
indeed too plain to be gainsaid. Yet however conspicuous this be
on the surface, as long as the old Japanese house continues to spraWl
and grovel stubbornly in the midst of Japan's cities, in other words,
as long as there exists this absence of balance that must be unique
in the whole world, Japanese society will never succeed in breaking
away from its roots in the past. Japanese wear Western clothes; they
walk, in Western shoes, on asphalt roads; they ride in cars and trams
and work in offices on the n-th floor of a Western style building which
has Western furniture, electric lighting and steam-heat. One is
tempted to ask, "Is there anything of Japan left?" And when it has
all been listed, with Western fountain pen in Western style account
book, it all comes back again to the house. "But is not this house,
even, a building on Western models?", it may well be asked. External-
ly, it is. But it has a gate, a fence, a hallway; and, after all, funnily
enough, the Japanese must still remove his shoes at the doorway.
Here, not one of the qualifications of the Japanese house has been
lost. So that the problem concerns not so much the size as the cir-
cumstances of this house. If a man wished to live in a house of
this style in a European city, then, if nothing else, he must at least
be rich. Why should it be then, that the man with the kind of
income that in Europe would force him to live in a not very high-
class terrace-house can live, not with any undue sense of distress or
stringency, in a house with this kind of qualification? The answer
is simple; the so-called Western style Japanese house, at basis, is not
European in the least.
Let us foUow the man who wears his Western clothes in his
European style house. He has a lawn and flower beds in his front
garden; sometimes there may even be a gardener to tend them. These
168 CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF MONSOON CLIMATE CHAPTER' THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF ~ l S CLIMATE 169
are all for his and his family's delectation. Yet he shows not the
slightest concern for the city park, for it is outside of his own house
and so belongs to someone else. And this is the outlook of everyone
else; the city park belongs to some other person, it is not "mine"
and so it receives no loving care or protection. It is run by the
city so that apart from the officials whose concern it is, noone feels
any obligations in respect of it. So a matter that affects the city
jointly does not attract the interest of the citizens generally but is
left in the care of a handful of not too honest politicians. So there
may be any amount of mismanagement, yet to the man living in
his Western style house this is beyond his own four walls and so
beyond his own ken. He, instead, in that he lives Western style,
has "new" interests, such as his children's education. The moment
his child blithely commits some dishonesty, then he sets his whole
heart to the matter and is intensely concerned. But a piece of dis-
honest practice on the part of a politician in a matter of public
concern does not even spur a hundredth part of such zeal. Again,
even when he watches society, managed by these politicians, heading
gradually towards a crisis as a result of their evil and corrupt practices,
his reaction is that, after all, this is outside of his own house and that
no doubt someone somewhere is assuming responsibility. Thus he
has no determined or even clearly formulated attitude to such a
problem. In other words, he does not regard the affairs of society as
his own; which, of itself, indicates how little he is Europeanised.
In spite of the Western clothes in which Japanese parliamentary
government has been conducted from the very first, the Japanese do
not concern themselves in affairs of such public moment with the
same zeal that they show for matters affecting their own person.
There will always be something laughable about the Japanese par-
liamentarian as long as he tries to imitate a style of government con-
ditioned by the discipline of communal life within a city wall while
yet trying to do away with this basic discipline. The Japanese lavished
most concern and value on his house; the lord of the manor could
change and provided that the new lord, whoever he might be, in no
way menaced his home, the Japanese gave the matter not the slightes
concern. Even if there was a threat, it might be evaded by resigna-
tion and acquiescence. Thus, however servile the labours he was
forced to perform, they did not impinge upon his intimate life within
his own family circle. But, in contrast, within the city wall any
resignation to a threat meant to the individual the loss of his all,
so that common and aggressive resistance was the only method by
which to preserve individuality. In the former instance, then, the
development of acquiescence went hand in hand with indifference
to public matters while in the latter, together with a keen interest
and a ready participation in public affairs there arose an esteem for
the claims of the individual. Only in the latter case was democracy
really possible; only there did the election of representatives have
true significance and only there could there exist public opinion-
of the people as a whole. The red flag hanging from one window
on the day of a Communist demonstration, the Imperial flag hanging
from that next door on the day of a nationalist demonstration-such
clear manifestations of a formed attitude together with a readiness
to recognise one's duties as a citizen by a ready participation in such
demonstrations are elements that democracy cannot afford to lack.
But such concern on the part of the people at large just does not
exist in Japan and, as a result, politics have become the specialised
occupation of power-mongers. One of the most outstanding instances
of this is that what goes by the name of a proletarian movement is
in fact merely that of a coterie of leaders; it includes hardly any or
at best only a handful of people to be led. It is not that this
indicates a basic hollowness in such movements; rather, just as the
Japanese show no care for a public park, so also the people at large
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170 CHAPTER. 3 THE DISTINCTIVE NATUU OF MONSOON CLIMATE
view anyIhing of a public nature as something outside themselves
and so the concern of someone else. So there is no heartfelt or deep
concern in something like economic revolution which, after all, is a
public problem. Instead a far greater wealth of concern is lavished
on matters confined to their life within the walls of their own house.
So just as parliamentary government does not truly reflect general
opinion, proletarian movements are in the same way, strictly speak-
ing, those of proletariat .leaders only and are in themselves no indica-
tion of the existence of a crystallised public opinion among the
proletariat at large. There are close affinities in this particular be
tween Japan and Russia. Russia is autocratic and its people in
general have never participated in government; this is closely paral-
leled by the indifference of the Japanese to matters of public concern
and their lack of a cooperative attitude to life. So this further instance
of Japan's rarity or strangeness-the fact that there are movements with
leaders only-can be said to be based on the distinction between
"house" and "outside".
Many more examples of Japan's rarity could be adduced. They
all stem from the character of the Japanese house and they all, in
the last analysis are reducible to the old familiar street scene of the
strangely tiny house cowering and grovelling in the path of the on-
coming tram, rampaging like a wild boar. This is a sight the Japa-
nese sees every day; whether he is aware of its full significance or not,
he no doubt feels in his heart of hearts that it is something of a
forlorn spectacle.
(Drafted 1929)
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